Research Activity #7

1. What is Art Nouveau?

Art Nouveau, ornamental style of art that flourished between about 1890 and 1910 throughout
Europe and the United States. Art Nouveau is characterized by its use of a long, sinuous, organic
line and was employed most often in architecture, interior design, jewelry and glass design,
posters, and illustration. It was a deliberate attempt to create a fresh style, free of the imitative
historicism that dominated much of 19th-century art and design. About this time the term Art
Nouveau was coined, in Belgium by the periodical L’Art Moderne to describe the work of the
artist group Les Vingt and in Paris by S. Bing, who named his gallery L’Art Nouveau. The style
was called Jugendstil in Germany, Sezessionstil in Austria, Stile Floreale (or Stile Liberty) in Italy,
and Modernismo (or Modernista) in Spain.

In England the style’s immediate precursors were the Aestheticism of the illustrator Aubrey
Beardsley, who depended heavily on the expressive quality of organic line, and the Arts and
Crafts movement of William Morris, who established the importance of a vital style in the applied
arts. On the European continent, Art Nouveau was influenced by experiments with expressive
line by the painters Paul Gauguin and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The movement was also partly
inspired by a vogue for the linear patterns of Japanese prints (ukiyo-e).

The distinguishing ornamental characteristic of Art Nouveau is its undulating asymmetrical line,
often taking the form of flower stalks and buds, vine tendrils, insect wings, and other delicate and
sinuous natural objects; the line may be elegant and graceful or infused with a powerfully
rhythmic and whiplike force. In the graphic arts the line subordinates all other pictorial elements—
form, texture, space, and colour—to its own decorative effect. In architecture and the other
plastic arts, the whole of the three-dimensional form becomes engulfed in the organic, linear
rhythm, creating a fusion between structure and ornament. Architecture particularly shows this
synthesis of ornament and structure; a liberal combination of materials—ironwork, glass, ceramic,
and brickwork—was employed, for example, in the creation of unified interiors in which columns
and beams became thick vines with spreading tendrils and windows became both openings for
light and air and membranous outgrowths of the organic whole. This approach was directly
opposed to the traditional architectural values of reason and clarity of structure.

After 1910 Art Nouveau appeared old-fashioned and limited and was generally abandoned as a
distinct decorative style. In the 1960s, however, the style was rehabilitated, in part, by major
exhibitions organized at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1959) and at the Musée
National d’Art Moderne (1960), as well as by a large-scale retrospective on Beardsley held at
the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in 1966. The exhibitions elevated the status of the
movement, which had often been viewed by critics as a passing trend, to the level of other major
Modern art movements of the late 19th century. Currents of the movement were then revitalized
in Pop and Op art. In the popular domain, the flowery organic lines of Art Nouveau were revived

Research Activity #7 ID2A History of Interior Design 2

as a new psychedelic style in fashion and in the typography used on rock and pop album covers
and in commercial advertising.

2. What is Whiplash Motif? Provide photos of works with whiplash motif.

The whiplash or whiplash line is a motif of decorative art and design that was particularly popular
in Art Nouveau. It is an asymmetrical, sinuous line, often in an ornamental S curve, usually
inspired by natural forms such as plants and flowers, which suggests dynamism and movement.
It took its name from a woven fabric panel called "Coup de Fouet" ("Whiplash") by the German
artist Hermann Obrist (1895) which depicted the stems and roots of the cyclamen flower.

Curling whiplash lines were modelled after natural and vegetal forms, particularly the cyclamen,
iris, orchid, thistle, mistletoe, holly, water lily and from the stylized lines of the swan, peacock,
dragonfly and butterfly.

In architecture, furniture and other decorative arts, the decoration was entirely integrated with
the structure. The whiplash lines were frequently interlaced and combined with twists and scrolls
to inspire a poetic and romantic association. Femininity and romanticism was represented by the
lines of long curling hair intertwined with flowers.

The twisting and curving lines of the whiplash form have a long history. They are similar to the
arabesque design, used particularly in Islamic art, such as the ceramic tiles of the mosque of
Samarkand in Central Asia, They featured prominently in the lavish decoration of the rocaille or
rococo style in the early 18th century. They were found in the Japanese prints of Katsushika
Hokusai, which became popular in France just as the Art Nouveau movement was beginning,
and which particularly inspired the paintings of flowers by Vincent van Gogh, such as The Irises
(1890).

The Belgian architect Victor Horta was among the first to introduce the whiplash curve into Art
Nouveau architecture, particularly in the wrought iron stairways and complementary ceramic
floors and painted walls of the Hôtel Tassel in Brussels (1892–93). The lines were inspired by
the curving stems of plants and flowers. The French architect Hector Guimard also adapted the
curving lines, particularly in the gateway, stairway and interior decoration of the Castel Béranger
in Paris (1894–98), and in the edicules over the entrances of the Paris Métro that he designed
for the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900. Guimard also used the curving whiplash line on a
large scale on the facade of the house he built for the ceramic’s manufacturer Coilliot in Lille
(1898–1900).

Art Nouveau was a comprehensive form of decoration, in which all the elements; furniture, lamps,
ironwork, carpets, murals, and glassware, had to be in the same style, or the harmony was
broken. Victor Horta, Hector Guimard, Henry van de Velde and other Art Nouveau architects
designed chairs, tables, lamps, carpets, tapestries ceramics and other furnishings with similar
curling whiplash lines. The whiplash line was intended to show the clear break from the eclectic
historical styles that had dominated furniture and decoration for most of the 19th century. Henry

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Van de Velde and Horta in particular integrated the whiplash lines into their furniture, both in the
shapes of desks and tables, the legs, in the brassware handles, and in railings and lamps, as
well as in the chairs. Right angles were nearly banished from the works.

An important furniture workshop was created in the French city of Nancy by Louis Majorelle.
Many designs with the whiplash line inspired by water lilies and other natural forms were created
by Majorelle's designers. In Belgium the most notable designer using the motif was Gustave
Serrurier-Bovy After 1900, the whiplash lines became simpler and more stylized. In the Glasgow
School in Scotland, the motif was used in furniture by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and in highly
stylized glass and paintings by his wife, Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh. Works with Whiplash
Motif

“The Whiplash”, Art Nouveau tapestry by Hermann Obrist, silk embroidered on wool, 1895; in
the Münchner Stadtmuseum, Munich

Arabesque pattern on a tile from Samarkand (15th century)

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 Whiplash motif at a metalwork railing. Editorial Montaner i Simón, Barcelona, Spain. (1881)

Casa vicens, by Antoni Gaudí i Cornet. Railing detail with whiplash motif (1883). Barcelona,
Spain. Early Art Nouveau building

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 Floor of the Hôtel Tassel, with the characteristic whiplash design. (1892–93)

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 Entrance of Castel Béranger by Hector Guimard (1894–98)

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 Facade of the Maison Coilliot in Lille by Hector Guimard (1898–1900)

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 Whiplash line on floor of the gallery of the Petit Palais (1900)

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 Atelier Elivira facade by in Jugendstil by August Endell. Munich (1896–97)

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 Gate of La Hublotière, country house of Hector Guimard (1896)

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 Main stairway of the Castel Béranger by Hector Guimard (1895–98)

Art Nouveau stairway of the Petit Palais of the 1900 Paris Exposition

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 Entrance gate of Guell pavilion by Antoni Gaudí (1883–87)

3. Who is Antoni Gaudi? Provide 2 of his works.

Antonio Gaudi y Cornet was a Catalan architect, whose distinctive style is characterized by
freedom of form, voluptuous color and texture, and organic unity. Gaudi worked almost entirely
in or near Barcelona. Much of his career was occupied with the construction of the Expiatory
Temple of the Holy Family (Sagrada Familia), which was unfinished at his death in 1926.

Gaudi’s style of architecture went through several phases. On emergence from the Provincial
School of Architecture in Barcelona in 1878, he practiced a rather florid Victorianism that had
been evident in his school projects, but he quickly developed a manner of composing by means
of unprecedented juxtapositions of geometric masses, the surfaces of which were highly
animated with patterned brick or stone, gay ceramic tiles, and floral or reptilian metalwork. The
general effect, although not the details, is Moorish—or Mudéjar, as Spain’s special mixture of
Muslim and Christian design is called. Examples of his Mudéjar style are the Casa Vicens (1878–
80) and El Capricho (1883–85) and the Güell Estate and Güell Palace of the later 1880s, all but
El Capricho located in Barcelona. Next, Gaudi experimented with the dynamic possibilities of
historic styles: the Gothic in the Episcopal Palace, Astorga (1887–93), and the Casa de los
Botines, León (1892–94); and the Baroque in the Casa Calvet at Barcelona (1898–1904). But
after 1902 his designs elude conventional stylistic nomenclature.

Except for certain overt symbols of nature or religion, Gaudi’s buildings became representations
of their structure and materials. In his Villa Bell Esguard (1900–02) and the Güell Park (1900–
14), in Barcelona, and in the Colonia Güell Church (1898–c. 1915), south of that city, he arrived

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at a type of structure that has come to be called equilibrated—that is, a structure designed to
stand on its own without internal bracing, external buttressing, and the like—or, as Gaudi
observed, as a tree stands. Among the primary elements of his system were piers and columns
that tilt to send diagonal thrusts, and thin-shell, laminated tile vaults that exert very little thrust.
Gaudi applied his equilibrated system to two multistoried Barcelona apartment buildings: The
Casa Batll (1904–06), a renovation that incorporated new equilibrated elements, notably the
facade; and the Casa Mila (1905–10), the several floors of which are structured like clusters of
tile lily pads with steel-beam veins. As was so often his practice, he designed the two buildings,
in their shapes and surfaces, as metaphors of the mountainous and maritime character of
Catalonia.

As an admired, if eccentric, architect, Gaudi was an important participant in the Renaixensa, an

artistic revival of the arts and crafts combined with a political revival in the form of fervent anti-
Castilian “Catalanism.” Both movements sought to reinvigorate the way of life in Catalonia that
had long been suppressed by the Castilian-dominated and Madrid-centered government in
Spain. The religious symbol of the Renaixensa in Barcelona was the church of the Holy Family,
a project that was to occupy Gaudi throughout his entire career. He was commissioned to build
this church as early as 1883, but he did not live to see it finished. Working on it, he became
increasingly pious; after 1910 he abandoned virtually all other work and even secluded himself
on its site and resided in its workshop. In his 75th year, while on his way to vespers, he was
struck down by a trolley car, and he died from the injuries. After Gaudi’s death, work continued
on the Sagrada Familia well into the 21st century. In 2010 the uncompleted church was
consecrated as a basilica by Pope Benedict XVI.

In his drawings and models for the church of the Holy Family (only one transept with one of its
four towers was finished at his death), Gaudi equilibrated the cathedral-Gothic style beyond
recognition into a complexly symbolic forest of helicoidal piers, hyperboloid vaults and sidewalls,
and a hyperbolic paraboloid roof that boggle the mind and outdo the bizarre concrete shells built
throughout the world in the 1960s by engineers and architects inspired by Gaudi. Apart from this
and a similar, often uncritical, admiration for Gaudi by Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist
painters and sculptors, Gaudi’s influence was quite local, represented mainly by a few devotees
of his equilibrated structure. He was ignored during the 1920s and ’30s, when the International
Style was the dominant architectural mode. By the 1960s, however, he came to be revered by
professionals and laymen alike for the boundless and tenacious imagination that he used to
attack each design challenge with which he was presented.

The architectural work of Gaudi is remarkable for its range of forms, textures, and polychromies
and for the free, expressive way in which these elements of his art seem to be composed. The
complex geometries of a Gaudi building so coincide with its architectural structure that the whole,
including its surface, gives the appearance of being a natural object in complete conformity with
nature’s laws. Such a sense of total unity also informed the life of Gaudi; his personal and
professional lives were one, and his collected comments about the art of building are aphorisms

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about the art of living. He was totally dedicated to architecture, which for him was a totality of
many arts.

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Works by Antoni Gaudi

Antoni Gaudi’s Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family (Sagrada Familia), Barcelona, construction
begun 1883.

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 Detail of the front facade of Casa Batlló, Barcelona, designed by Antoni Gaudí, 1904–06.

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 Detail of exterior window of Casa Batlló, Barcelona, designed by Antoni Gaudí, 1904–06.

Interior of the Casa Batlló in Barcelona, designed by Antoni Gaudí, 1904–06.

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 Casa Milá, Barcelona, designed by Antoni Gaudí, 1905–10.

Güell Park, Barcelona, designed by Antoni Gaudí, 1900–14.

4. Who is Hector Guimard? Provide 2 of his works.

Research Activity #7 ID2A History of Interior Design 2

Hector-Germain Guimard was an architect, decorator, and furniture designer, probably the
bestknown French representative of Art Nouveau.

Guimard studied and later taught at the School of Decorative Arts and at the École des BeauxArts
(“School of Fine Arts”) in Paris. Although much of his work is more engineering than architecture,
he considered himself an architecte d’art. His Castel Béranger apartment building at 16 rue La
Fontaine, Passy, Paris (1894–98), was one of the first Art Nouveau edifices outside Belgium,
where the style originated. Several entrance structures (1898–1901) for the Paris Métro
(subway), of cast iron in plantlike forms, are his best-known works. The Place de la Bastille
station suggests Chinese pagoda architecture as well as Art Nouveau. The elevations and
decorative ironwork of his apartment houses at 17–21 and 60 rue La Fontaine (1911) are tasteful
and restrained. More bizarre, perhaps because its setting allowed a freer treatment, is the Castel
Henriette in Sèvres (1903). Guimard also designed an Art Nouveau synagogue, at 10 rue Pavée,
Paris (1913).

Works of Hector Guimard

Paris Metro subway entrance

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 Castel Beranger Lobby

Castel Henriette

5. Who is Victor Horta? Provide 2 of his works.

Victor Baron Horta was an outstanding architect of the Art Nouveau style, who ranks with Henry
van de Velde and Paul Hankar as a pioneer of modern Belgian architecture.

Horta began his studies in architecture in 1873 at the Académie des Beaux-Arts and then at
Athénée Royal (1874–77), both in Ghent, Belgium. He moved to Brussels in 1881 and attended
the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, where he was a pupil of the Neoclassical architect
Alphonse Balat. His first independent building, the four-storied Hôtel Tassel in Brussels (1892–
93), was among the first Continental examples of Art Nouveau, although it incorporated
NeoGothic and Neo-Rococo stylistic elements. An important feature was its octagonal hall with
a staircase leading to various levels. The curved line, characteristic of the Art Nouveau style,
was used on the facade and also in the interior. Other buildings in Brussels in his rich, elegant
style are Hôtel Solvay (1895–1900), notable for the plastic treatment of its facade, and Hôtel
Winssingers (1895–96), as well as his own house on the rue Américaine (1898). His chief work

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is the Maison du Peuple, Brussels (1896–99), which was the first structure in Belgium to have a
largely iron and glass facade. In its auditorium the iron roof beams are both structural and
decorative.

After 1900 Horta simplified his style, using decoration more sparingly and eliminating exposed
iron. In 1912 he became the director of Brussels’s Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts and
designed the Palais des Beaux-Arts (1922–28) in a simple and severe classical style. His last
major undertaking was the central railway station in Brussels, begun just before World War II.

Works by Victor Horta

Hôtel Tassel, Brussels, designed by Victor Horta.

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 Staircase in the Hôtel Tassel (1892–93) designed by Victor Horta, in Brussels.

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